27 May 2015

Patio & Porch Flowers: Better Late than Never!

As I mentioned in my last post, being gone a lot over the past month set me behind in a number of areas (OK, in ALL areas!), one of which is my gardening. I didn't want to have my cat sitter fuss with watering patio pots while we were gone, so I waited until we finished our traveling to plant them. Of course, the down side to waiting is that some nurseries were picked over, but I still managed to find quite a few very nice flowers. 

BUT...due to my tardiness getting purchasing plants, I had to violate not one but THREE of my own rules for patio pots this year!

1) I bought geraniums. UGH. I'm not a fan of geraniums, but I know people swear by their hardiness so I thought I'd try them in a couple of pots this year. I had poor luck with the dahlias I planted in these heavy urns last year. I'm hoping for better luck with the geraniums.
 

 2) I bought petunias. I don't like petunias at all, but I found some lovely double petunia hanging baskets this year which really don't look like petunias. They are huge, heavy, and beautiful right now. I hope I can keep them alive!

 3) I bought pink flowers. Sheesh, there are a LOT of pink flowers in greenhouses this year. I am not a fan of pink (or red!) ANYTHING, but I had to buy a few pink flowers here and there for lack of other suitable colors. I added a lot of purple and white so hopefully the pink will be somewhat disguised!
 

I also planted five pots of herbs, including basil, cilantro, rosemary, and sorrel. I have no idea what sorrel is, but it's a beautiful plant. There's a recipe on the back of the tag so we'll be giving it a try!

 We got a ton of rain this weekend, which was good timing for my newly planted pots!

I'm sure I've mentioned this is previous posts, but I like to overfill my pots. I am not patient enough to wait for flowers to fill in the empty spaces. Just today I added the dusty miller sprigs to many of the pots to fill in some blank areas.

  Argh...there are PINK vincas in my front porch pots! NO! I could not find white vincas anywhere over the weekend when I was filling the pots. Of course when I stopped by a greenhouse today, there were plenty. :)

  Although I'm whining about the pink flowers, I really do enjoy gardening season. Regardless of the color, I love having flowers around the yard and snipping blooms for bouquets. Now that the pots are planted, I hope to turn my attention to other neglected gardening tasks!
jp



2 comments:

Kristina said...

LOL at your post....because everything you hate, I love and use every year, including the color pink. My mother used a lot of geraniums in our yard and they remind me of her and I love the variety that you can get of petunias and other than the rabbits loving them, easy to care.

Janet said...

Thanks for stopping by, Kristina! My mom loved red geraniums and that is part of the reason I have avoided them (other than not liking red!) -- sometimes those reminders are too poignant. The pink geraniums (other than that they're pink! LOL) are a good compromise. And I'm happy to report that the petunias and the geraniums are still looking great! I may turn over a new leaf after all. :)